January – all the things I’d forgotten I’d done

It seems like only two minutes since Christmas and New Year, but then at the same time they also feel like a lifetime ago.

So, what exactly have I been up to in January. Sitting here now it seems a bit hard to work out exactly what I’ve been up to for the whole month, but I’m sure I’ll work it out.

The biggest thing has probably been that January has been the month in which I started running again. Here I am on the 29th of the month and I’m delighted to say that I’ve clocked up a whole 70km in January (so far!) and am generally feeling so much better for doing so. There were lots of reasons why I decided to get my trainers back on (written about elsewhere, ping me on twitter if you want a link…) and it is being done as a self-improvement thing, but I’m also enjoying getting out of the house three times and week and having a bit of me time in the process.

I’ve also made January the month where I try and connect with some of my friends a bit more. From the outside this may just seem like a bit of an excuse to go for coffee lots (and that’s no bad thing) but I think my friends and friendships have been a bit neglected over the last few years and I need to resolve that a bit. Two nights out with different friends have both been great fun, as have several coffees in town with people whilst the kids are at school and pre-school.

Talking of the kids. Master C has now started going to his pre-school three mornings a week and is loving it. He’s also started lunch club there two days a week and it’s the highlight of his week. His eating is still terrible and his diet mainly consists of pork pies, Soreen and those bags of yoghurt covered fruit, but chatting to someone on twitter gave me a bit of a push to really try to get him more involved in food preparation to see if that helps. Small steps so far, but I’m hoping it will work in the long term.

Little Miss C is loving school still, although I think being good there all day sometimes means that home life isn’t exactly always calm. The Tooth Fairy paid her first visit to us this last week and freaked me out totally in the process. I HATE teeth with a passion. Just thinking about them makes me squirm. Ugh!

I’ve not been crafting anywhere near enough this month, despite making a start on another version of the Spice of Life blanket that I made last year. This is with the Stylecraft DK yarn pack this time and as much as I loved the original I think I’m actually preferring these colours. I’ve got out of the habit of making time to craft and I need to sort that out in February. Back on New Year’s Eve I finally finished my Attic 24 Ripple Blanket. I just haven’t yet got round to blogging about it. I will soon though. Too much effort went into that to not shout about it a bit.

Thanks to the WI I’ve tried my hand at Power Hooping and totally become addicted. These hoops are about 1 meter across and the one I tried with weighs 1.6kg – meaning that it’s all very different to what I used to do in the school playground! I plan to buy myself a hoop and see if I can make 2016 the year that I finally ditch my “mummy tummy”.

After buying Marie Kondo’s book last year I’ve now made a proper start on decluttering the house. Mr C is still taking the p*** over how I have now organised our t-shirt drawer, but I am seeing some method come from all of this and it’s amazing how much calmer I strangely feel after two hours decluttering our bathroom. It’s going to take a while to get everything done (and I now have a mountain of stuff to sell on eBay) but I definitely feel like I’ve taken the first steps towards something good. A push from the same twitter friend who got me cooking with Master C means that her second book is also sat on my bedside cabinet, next on my reading list.

At Christmas I gave up my voluntary role running a local playgroup, and it honestly feels like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I think I was very ready to move on from that particular responsibility. My role as school governor continues though, and there a few new challenges over the next couple of months with that that I’m actually looking forward to getting my teeth into.

Finally I’ve been trying to embrace a few of the things that I used to enjoy – namely reading and listening to the radio. When I first started blogging here I used to regularly write about the books I’d been reading. That tailed off somewhat when the kids came along, but this month I’ve been keeping notes of the books I’m working my way though and plan to publish monthly summaries here. That simple pleasure of losing yourself in a book has been rediscovered.

As for the radio, well I’ve rediscovered the joys of talk radio – and audience participation! Not only does Radio 4 (and Radio 4 Extra) have some excellent comedies, but there’s plenty of other stuff going on that you can pick up. Over the last few years I’ve regularly enjoyed Iain Lee on BBC3CR Breakfast, but the radio often went back to Radio 2 for a bit more music to help ease me into the day. Daft really then that now Iain’s gone I tune in more regularly. I’ve even gone as far as speaking to the current host Justin Dealey on air about something. Funny how that can be more nerve wracking than sitting in at the Radio Verulum studio every month to do my thrifty spot on their drive time show! Radio podcasts had also mainly passed me by until now, but I have at least got a huge back catalogue of various talk and comedy radio stuff now loaded up on my phone to listen to until Iain hopefully gets back on air, where he belongs, later this Spring.

So, in a nutshell, that’s my January. Not as empty as it first looked, but funny how easily you can forget what you’ve been up to.